POWER OF MACHINES. 23 
chine ; well, endow this machine, if you please, with the 
power of thought and all the perfections imaginable, and 
the product of the weight multiplied by the height it will 
have passed: through in a given time, will be exactly 
equal to that obtained by the employment of the same 
force without any intermediate operation. The real 
effect, then—or, to speak more strongly, the effect of 
any machine when properly estimated—will never sur- 
pass that which the motive force was capable of pro- 
ducing naturally. Doubtless you can, if you like, with 
a machine, raise enormous masses, of millions or thou- 
sands of millions of pounds ; but since the product of the 
weight, multiplied by the height, must remain constant, 
the height to which these masses can be raised in a 
minute will be millions or thousands of millions of times 
smaller than that to which your hand might have raised 
one pound in the same time. 
Every one will now understand the true meaning of 
that aphorism in mechanics, Machines lose in time or 
velocity what they gain in power! Give me a point of 
support situated outside the earth, cried Archimedes, 
and I will, with the aid of a lever, raise this earth, so 
large and massive, by the mere effort of my hand. The 
exclamation of the immortal geometer was marvellously 
characteristic of machines, in so far as they give to man 
the means of realizing effects otherwise millions of mil- 
lions of times beyond his natural strength ; but antiquity 
would no doubt have admired it much less if any one, 
analyzing phenomena more closely, as we have just 
done, had added: Yes, doubtless, mathematically speak- 
ing, with his fulerum and lever Archimides might raise 
the globe; but, after forty million centuries of continu- 
ous effort (for such a calculation is not, at the present 
